Peewee hockey players in Westlock and across Alberta will no longer be allowed to deliver body checks after Hockey Alberta eliminated body checking in that age level.
Hockey Alberta announced the decision on May 8, following close to two years of discussion about how to make hockey safer.
“Our players’ safety is the foundation in making this decision,” said Hockey Alberta chair Rob Virgil in a press release announcing the move. “There is overwhelming evidence that body checking is the single most consistent risk factor for injuries and concussions in youth ice hockey.”
For the Westlock and District Minor Hockey Association, the decision came pretty much out of the blue.
President Denise Boulerice said she was aware the provincial body had been looking at trying to make hockey safer and reduce injuries, but did not expect the ban to be put in place so quickly.
“In terms of them banning it, just ‘boom’ the announcement today, that was a little bit surprising,” she said last Wednesday.
Boulerice said she was especially surprised because at the 2012 Hockey Alberta AGM, the majority of minor hockey associations around the province did not favour imposing a body-checking ban.
“I guess Hockey Alberta went with their own professionals and their own documentation and their own statistics and just decided they were going to take the lead on this,” she said.
Boulerice’s surprise is also amplified by the fact the Westlock association was one of those associations that wanted to see body checking remain at the peewee level.
“As an association, we do support body checking in peewee,” she said. “We haven’t had any major injuries and we haven’t had any major incidents. What we’ve heard is ‘start it earlier, so it’s not just a big phenomenon when kids are 11 and 12.’”
Hockey Alberta executive director Rob Litwinski said the decision to remove body checking from peewee first started gaining steam at around the time of the 2011 Hockey Alberta AGM.
At that time, the association was addressing player safety and concussion prevention.
“You can’t really talk about concussions without body checking entering into the discussion,” he said.
From that point, Hockey Alberta formed a committee to look into the science of body checking and research about the risks involved.
In the end, the committee recommended that body checking be removed from peewee-level hockey.
A major factor in the recommendation to remove body checking was a comparison between minor hockey in Quebec and Alberta.
In Quebec, players don’t get to body check in games until they reach bantam.
Litwinski said research was brought forward that showed there was no difference in injury rates at the bantam level in either province, putting lie to the notion teaching body checking earlier reduces injuries later on.
“The research shows that kids in Quebec are finding a way to at least be at the same rate of injury as Albertans, who have had these extra two years of checking,” he said.
However, Litwinski said body checking will still be taught, just not used in games.
“Rather than throwing people into game situations to learn, we believe there will be time in peewee to teach it in practice,” he said.
As such, coaches will still be instructed on how to teach players to give and receive body checks safely, he added.
When presented with the idea people may be upset with taking body checking away from younger players, Litwinski said keeping the players safe is Hockey Alberta’s overriding goal.
“If that’s where our organization is going to be criticized, that we are thinking player safety first, based on facts and not based on speculation, then that’s something we want,” he said.
